Sunday, March 2, 2008

Frank Marino: Pedalboards and Platform-Boots

The virtuosity of Mahogany Rush guitarist Frank Marino has drawn comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Duane Allman. On the Maxoom and Child of the Novelty albums, Marino effortlessly combines feverish blues solos, simulated slide guitar tones using left hand vibrato, and jazz-influenced single note runs. While you may not have heard of Frank Marino before, which is understandable since he didn't tour much during the 90s, youtube.com has numerous Frank Marino (and Mahogany Rush) live performance clips at your disposal to get you up to speed. In particular, check out Marino performing "I'm a King Bee" at the 1998 Ottawa Bluesfest (here). If you like what you hear (and see), you'll probably want to pick up the following pedals to replicate Marino's tones:

a DeArmond volume pedal;

a Maestro Echoplex - the original tape Echoplexes are notoriously unreliable and require near constant maintenance. We recommend that you pick up Line6's DL4 Delay Modeler instead, which has built-in digital samples of Echoplexes and Space Echos;

an Electro Harmonix Big Muff fuzz pedal;

an Eventide Flanger pedal - original Eventide pedals are hard to come by. Fortunately, Eventide has recently released a comparable pedal called the ModFactor Modulation pedal which includes flanger effects; and

a Maestro phase shifter - basic looking pedal with three colored rocker switches (turquoise, yellow and red). Just saw one on ebay today selling for $31.00 (Ebay item number 140210501525).